Month: April 2013

May Day is one of those holidays that seems medieval, even ancient; the customs of flowers and fertility rites definitely feel like they go back a long time, and if they don't, they should. This is the difficulty with settling down to write about medieval May Day celebrations, because so much of what we associate …

I've let this blog thing slide a bit, because last week was mental deadline crazy week, plus I was giving a lunchtime talk in the department. (We call these 'graduate seminars', but in reality most of the people who come to them are from the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, the university itself, …

We're all over the planet today! Well, not the whole planet. All over Europe, though. Arthur, War and the Sea Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale, Boulogne-sur-Mer Dates: 22-24 May 2014 Deadline: ASAP The deadline for this actually passed months ago, but I've just had a notice that they're still accepting some, so email a half-page …

I know, once again the weekend passes without a CFP roundup; I will collect some things for that in a couple of days. Something came up that was more important that I wanted to talk about: getting a job. Most of us have, by this point, read William Pannapacker's Graduate School in the Humanities: Just …

Warning: this post pretty much exists to prove one of my friends wrong. Traditionally, there are expected ways of dealing with people who are wrong on the internet--ways that usually involve pithy (or not so pithy) phrases and the judicious application of cat pictures. In this case, this is doubly effective, because what my nameless …